


Red is the New Black

by rosiedoesfic



Series: Valentine's Day Silliness [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Prequel, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:11:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosiedoesfic/pseuds/rosiedoesfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prequel to the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/615924">unnamed Valentine’s fic</a> originally written for darkmoon711. Churned out for Valentine's Day! A fluffy comedy of errors. Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red is the New Black

**Red is the New Black**

 

Jamie Markham wasn't aware that he was staring until Coxley stood up abruptly and blocked his view. He half opened his mouth to tell him to move, but hurriedly feigned a yawn when he realised what he was doing.

Across the mess hall, Adam Stackhouse grinned around his spoon as Parker regaled him with one of his Tales of Ambiguous Veracity. Parker was good at that: spinning stories that were three parts bullshit to one part half-truth, but so entertaining that you stopped caring whether they were real or not after the first few sentences. 

Jamie was partly jealous and partly glad that _someone_ could make Stacks grin like that, because he didn't do it often. He was far too serious for someone really only a couple of months older than Jamie himself. Jamie did _try_ to make him smile, sometimes, but Stacks would usually just look at him and turn faintly red; a lot like someone too embarrassed to ask a stranger with a strong accent to repeat themselves a third or fourth time. 

Sometimes, Jamie wondered if that was actually the problem.

"Geez, Jim Bob," Coxley snorted, glancing over his shoulder at the table behind him, "One of these days you're gonna stare so hard your eyes fall out."

Jamie glared at him (although, in truth it was more of a pout) and complained, "I was _not_ staring, man! And would you quit calling me that?"

"You keep mooning over the guy like that and I'm gonna start calling you Mary Jane," Coxley retorted.

" _Mooning!?_ "

Jamie realised he'd protested a little too loudly when the occupants of three other tables turned around and smirked, before looking over at Stackhouse, who suddenly seemed to wonder why everyone was staring at him and turned and unnatural shade of fuschia. 

"I am _not_ mooning," Jamie insisted, rather more quietly. Because he wasn't. He was staring and there was a difference.

"If you're not mooning you're perving, and frankly, I'm not going there," Coxley informed him, patting him firmly on the shoulder and turning to leave. "It's February thirteenth, Jim Bob. You go sic'em, boyo." 

It took four whole minutes of mentally thumbing through the calendar before Jamie realised quite simply that Coxley had been referring to the _Earth_ calendar and a Hallmark Holiday that it turned out was sort of imminent. 

He hadn't sent a Valentine's card since he was eight years old and forced to make one out of chopped up paper doilies glued to violently pink construction paper. His teacher had called in Jamie's parents when he had nonchalantly declared he wanted to send it to the kid who sat next to him; Frank. And it wasn't as if he could just pop out to Athos and stop at the gift shop, anyway. But maybe, he thought, as he poked at his dessert with his spoon, it wasn't really a card he needed. 

Once he'd made his mind up, Jamie wasn't usually capable of talking himself out of things (even when it would probably have been best for everyone if he did). And that was why after several sleepless hours of planning and re-planning his move, he found himself standing outside Adam's door, mumbling his little speech one (or maybe five) last time. 

He had to get it right.

Closing his eyes, he raised a hand and reached out to knock on the door, but before his knuckles could rap on the surface there was a quiet _swoosh_ and rather more quickly than expected, Jamie found himself face to face with a wide-eyed and mortified Adam Stackhouse. 

He was flustered; frozen with shock apart from an extremely unsubtle shove of both hands behind his back and the slow creep of blood rising in his cheeks. 

Jamie stared at him; Adam stared back.

Jamie blanched as he realised rather suddenly that he had forgotten everything he'd planned to say; Adam didn't even appear to be breathing.

Not wanting to cause the other marine to simply faint, he finally managed and uncomfortable, "Um. Hello."

"Hello?" Stackhouse replied weakly, in a tone that suggested a recent and narrow avoidance of heart-failure.

"Hi."

"...Hi?"

"Uh... how're you?"

Jamie could just about hear himself above the rushing in his ears and his voice of reason pleading, _'Run away! Run away!'_ , and he was rapidly drawing the conclusion that curling up and dying where he stood may, possibly, have been the most dignified outcome for this conversation. 

"Er..." Adam began, peering down the corridor to see if anyone else was around - but only the graveyarders in their labs and idiots on kamikaze missions were up at this time of day. "Fine?" he offered. 

It didn't sound like he was sure.

"Well... that's... _good_."

"...I guess."

They hovered in the doorway in awkward silence for a few moments before Stackhouse finally scratched the back of his neck - keeping one hand firmly pinned behind his back - and asked, "Was there... um... something I could do for you?" 

Jamie could think of a few, but none of them seemed entirely appropriate, right now. On the other hand, if he didn't say something, Stacks wouldn't just think he was a lunatic, he'd have conclusive proof.

"Well..." he cleared his throat and tried, "Do you wanna...um... sometime when.. y'know... I mean, do you wanna, like...?" 

He trailed off as he realised that Adam was giving him the, ‘I don’t speak yokel' look again.

As if his subconscious had suddenly staged a coup and assumed control, Jamie found himself blurting, “Look, I have the biggest crush on you,” entirely against his will. He clamped his hand over his mouth in horror, but it was something of a case of bolting the stable door as the horse disappeared into the sunset, dragging his last shred of dignity behind it. 

Adam looked even more inclined to pass out than he had during the moments when he had elected not to breathe. Then, without even looking at Jamie, he raised a hand with all the nervous hesitation of a child offering its palm for caning and poked him in the chest with a crumpled and sweaty envelope.

After several seconds of wondering where the hell he’d found a card shop in the Pegasus Galaxy, he found the presence of mind to ask, “For me?”

Stackhouse blinked at him as if the question was too stupid to compute. Instead, he poked him with it a little harder.

“Well… um, thanks,” Jamie mumbled, blushing. “Where the hell did you get this? I mean… I never thought there’d be anywhere out here where you’d – “

“I didn’t,” Adam admitted awkwardly, “I got it last year… but there just never seemed like a good time.”

Jamie gaped at him for a minute, not sure whether to be delirious or annoyed that he’d been made to suffer this long; instead, he just tugged the card out of its envelope and opened it up.

“You forgot to sign it!” he grinned, nonetheless rather pleased.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Sure you did,” Jamie said, showing him the inside, where there was very pointedly No Name.

“I didn’t _forget_ ,” Adam assured him a little more forcefully. “I’m just chicken.”

Touched, Jamie smiled and shoved him backwards into his room. “Well,” he said pushing the card into his pocket, “I guess you’re lucky I’m not.”

Adam didn’t appear convinced; but he didn't complain, either.


End file.
